| At my brother's suggestion, and with my enthusiastic sanction, Mark and I embarked on a three-day quest to see if we could locate any of those mythical substances called, "rocks." |
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We followed the relatively incoherent directions in the book, Gem Trails of Arizona towards a number of collecting sites around the Wickenburg/Burro Creek/Alamo Lake areas. (As an aside, Burro Creek is so named because of the obstreperous wild burros that inhabit it) Several sites were blocked by road closures, and one was posted as a mining claim for the very rocks we were seeking (it was also for sale). As far as I could tell, there wasn't anything of interest there anyway. The road (and I use that term loosely) to that mining claim was definitely not for the faint of heart. |
| It would have been a fun trip even without encountering rocks, but the hills have not yet been depleted. We came home with 185 pounds of pastelite. Before this trip I had never heard of pastelite. The internet refers to it as jasper with pastel colored inclusions, and T-Rocks in Quartsite sells it for $4.00/pound. I might be persuaded to part with some of it for substantially less... (But only if you'll haul it away.) |
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We also picked up 77 pounds of a yellow-brown jasper. It isn't much to look at, but most of what I have appears fairly solid, and might serve as backing material for other projects. |
| Last, and undoubtedly least, we picked up 5 pounds of, "Oh, look at that, I wonder if it would polish..." |
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Theses "pocket pieces" are proof that all this stuff will polish. The pastelite seems significantly harder than most rocks I deal with. A piece the size of 1½ fists that would normally cut in 3 to 5 minutes required 15 to 20. I don't know exactly what to make of that... |
Because I wanted to make something from what we collected, I shaped a stylized arrowhead out of a piece of relatively nondescript yellow-brown jasper. And finishing one project stimulated me to finish several others that have been sitting around waiting for inspiration. What these six pieces have in common is that they were polished by adding something to their surface instead of removing microscopic surface roughness. In the case of the chessboard it was a two part floor wax that bills itself as leaving the surface "looking wet." The others were coated using an epoxy based product called "Super Glaze," a "pour on," "self leveling," liquid that cures in only 72 hours. I have the somewhat eccentric habit of naming the products of my compulsions. The arrowhead and the chessboard are obvious, but can you pick out the bat eared moth, the walking fish, the scream, and the bolo tie bowtie? (These images were captured using a scanner. Hence the shallow depth-of-field.) |
| The day after I returned home, we attended the birthday party for AL3 in San Tan Valley. Barbara wisely took the camera from me, and that explains both the plethora of images and the absence of her likeness in any of them. |
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The theme of the festivities was centered around "Construction", and the ground floor of the house was well adorned with decorations. |
| This included the cakes, (one for the Birthday Boy, and one for all others)... |
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...and extended to the candies that were strewn about the party parlor. |
| The party was well attended, including AL2's parents, Brittney's parents, grandparents, and siblings, Nada and Jimmy Spurgeon, their daughter Megan, two cats, and the UPS delivery guy. Unfortunately, we have no image that does that crowd justice. |
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At first, AL3 didn't seeem to grasp the ramifications of the festivities. |
| But it didn't take him long to figure things out. |
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And then he really got in the thick of things. |
| There were many presents that excited him, but my intuition suggested that his favorite was a stuffed toy--an eight foot long caterpillar given to him by his Uncle Josh. My intuition also suggested that this toy might not be the favorite of his parents. |
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AL3 had his own cake, with the expectation that he was going to tear into it. The reality was that he limited his exuberance to licking a little of the frosting off his fingers. |
| There is a kumquat tree struggling to grow in their back yard and I sampled its fruit. The best description of it would be, "sour on steroids!" But, given that they weren't planning to use any of it, I confiscated this years crop to make a couple of cups of marmalade. The cooking process went well, until the very last step, when my concoction scorched a little (but only on the bottom...). Even so, the spread still has a powerful flavor, and both Compton and I hardily approve of it. Barbara, on the other hand, not so much... |
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